The nomadic campground hotel in Marfa will be expanded and reimagined as a 62-acre community, featuring large-scale 3D-printed structures for new guest units and hospitality spaces. Breaking ground in 2024, El Cosmico will continue to celebrate the convergence of creative culture and the minimalistic natural environment of the Marfa landscape. To celebrate the collaboration, the team partnered with Austin’s Long Center for the Performing Arts to bring a taste of El Cosmico to Austin, Texas during SXSW. The 3D-printed performance pavilion combines the architectural design themes planned for the new El Cosmico in Marfa in a single, sculptural space for culture and community in the heart of downtown Austin. “Our collaboration with El Cosmico and ICON has allowed us to pursue the formal and material possibilities of cutting-edge 3D printed construction untethered by the traditional limitations of a conventional site or client. Liz Lambert’s legacy for reimagining hospitality and her pioneering of a contemporary Texan aesthetic combined with the Minimalistic nature and culture, art and landscape of Marfa has been the perfect fit to pursue a new architectural vernacular language for El Cosmico in Marfa. Organic shapes, Euclidian circular geometries and a color palette born from the local terroir makes El Cosmico feel as if literally erected from the site it stands on. As an outpost of El Cosmico in Austin, Liz Lambert, ICON and BIG have partnered to create a permanent pavilion for music and performances. A single crescent wall emerges from the natural slope of the Long Centre’s front lawn. The adobe like color and texture of the horizontally layered wall appears like geological strata in an exposed cliff. Inspired by the Uruguayan engineer and architect Eladio Dieste, the sinuous curves at the foot of the pavilion provide both structural stability and social niches for the audience and performers. Organic form as structural function,” Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG.
